6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
Drainage Ditch Blockage West of High School in Kingwood Drive median. Before start of project.Looking S toward Lake Kingwood. Here’s what that same area looks like today after the start of cleanup.
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
Looking N from Kingwood Country Club Lake Course toward Kings Forest.Still looking N at culverts under westbound Kingwood Drive, you can see they are literally half filled with silt.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
Project area outlined in red
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/20250629-DJI_20250629192138_0422_D.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=16191100adminadmin2025-06-30 18:53:112025-06-30 18:53:12City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
6/30/25 and 7/3/25 – Updated to clarify a distinction between Bond Projects and Bond IDs, and also correct several entries in tables.
6/29/25 – Analysis of documents released after the Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting on 6/26/25, shows that because of a claimed 25% flood-bond funding shortfall, the county will stop funding 80% of Bond IDs and 75% of Bond projects. Precinct 3 will bear the most cuts.
Usually, precincts share equally, but in this case, Precinct 3, the lone Republican-led district will retain only 14% of active projects.
Before the meeting, the county had released only one blank page about what turned out to be the disappearance of more than a billion dollars.
Something’s not adding up that demands an explanation.
Huh? 80% of Projects Cut after Losing 25% of Funding?
The $2.5 billion Bond was sold with a project list that totaled roughly $5.1 billion. However, partner funding more than made up the difference. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has commitments for another $2.7 billion – bringing the total available to $5.2 billion. A $1.3 billion shortfall is 25% of that total.
Questions:
Why the shortfall?
Why the disproportionate cuts?
Why are we only learning now – seven years into the bond?
Are the proposed cuts fair?
Reasons Proposed for Shortfall
In her presentation Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, attempted to explain the shortfall by alluding to:
Cost increases (i.e., due to inflation)
Grant requirements
Changing regulations
Right-of-way acquisitions
Program structure
Others have alluded to:
Scope creep
Cumbersome processes related to Ellis equity formula
Slow execution
Political interference
Need for more money in the original bond
Changes in leadership at HCFCD
Personnel turnover at lower levels
Unnecessary bureaucracy that adds cost without adding value
Covid
Low initial estimates
Addition of projects
IT system issues
Why Such Draconian Cuts?
Why are the cuts so disproportionate to the shortfall?
But it also called to fully fund future costs associated with those projects. That builds scope creep into the bond.
If, for instance, the Flood Bond only included a preliminary engineering review for a project, it will now include full engineering, design, right-of-way acquisition, construction, landscaping, turnover costs and bagels.
In other words…
Funding for projects that voters approved is being cut to pay for projects they didn’t approve.
It’s a fundamental breach of public trust.
Why Are We Only Learning Now?
Since Harris County Democratic Commissioners brought in new management, HCFCD has largely gone dark. For example:
The District, once a paragon of transparency, efficiency, and speed under the previous leadership, has largely stopped updating its website as performance decreased.
Harris County Flood Control bid only three projects last year.
Active projects used to be updated weekly. Now they’ve disappeared from the website.
Bond-update frequency fell from monthly to quarterly to semi-annually to whenever-we-get-around-to-it. The last one took more than a year.
The County’s Flood Resilience Task Force is still waiting for flood-risk data it requested years ago.
The lack of information masks serious issues that have built for years concerning the efficiency and transparency of Flood Control.
In last week’s discussion, Judge Lina Hidalgo complained repeatedly and bitterly about her lack of understanding, a lack of transparency and her inability to get simple, straight answers.
But hey, what kind of manager puts up with that? For seven years!
Are Cuts Fair?
The County uses Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index to rank flood-mitigation Bond IDs from 0 to 10 using a multi-factor index. Some Bond IDs contain multiple projects. But whether you assess the cuts by Bond ID or Projects, P3 still suffers the most.
After a marathon 5-hour discussion, Commissioners voted to continue funding only projects scoring above 7.5. The rest will die.
Ellis’ scoring matrix gives 65% weight to factors such as race, household income, social vulnerability, population density, and housing density.
It gives no weight to flood damage, severity of flooding, flood frequency, or flood risk.
Ellis cherry-picked statistics to gerrymander flood-control dollars, not reduce damage.
Many of the remaining dollars in the bond will go to watersheds that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funds. Meanwhile…
Other watersheds that have been shortchanged will now have their pockets picked.
Precinct 3 had the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
Yet Precinct 3, the lone, Republican-led precinct, bore the brunt of the funding cuts wide margins.
Precinct 3 projects will suffer the most.
Here’s a breakdown of the totals by quintile and precinct. Because projects sometimes cross precinct boundaries, when a project did so, I counted it once for each precinct it benefitted.
Next, look at Bond IDs. A bond ID may contain multiple projects. And again, when a Bond ID benefited two precincts, I counted it twice. Percentages change slightly. But the same basic picture emerges…only more so:
Precinct 3 had the most Bond IDs defunded and kept the fewest.
Barrett Station is in Precinct 3. It’s one of the poorest areas in the county. And it had its funding cut. That shows this is more about politics than concern for the poor.
The funding cuts likely won’t affect a subset of 29 projects funded by HUD because those are 100% federally funded. Regardless…
The county will now pursue only one in four or five of the remaining bond projects/IDs.
Stunned citizens are struggling to comprehend the scope of the cuts, which will negatively impact roughly 80% of the county.
No wonder the county kept a tight lid on its analysis and didn’t post anything for the public to review before the meeting. Protesters might have showed up to counter two hours of testimony by Ellis’ surrogates last Thursday.
We Need to Demand…
Answers.
Action.
Accountability.
Fairness.
And we need them fast. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has filed a lawsuit yet. This feels like slow-motion voter fraud.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/29/25and updated on 6/30/25
2861 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
6/27/25 4PM – In a marathon discussion yesterday that stretched for hours, Harris County Commissioners Court struggled with how to plug a $1.3 billion shortfall in 2018 Flood-Bond funding. In the end, they voted 4-1 along party lines to apply all remaining flood-bond money exclusively to projects that ranked in the top quartile on Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis arguing that remaining flood-bond funds be directed only to projects with a high “equity” component.
This will effectively defund all projects that fall into the second, third and fourth quartiles on Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Framework.
The Motion
Commissioners voted 4:1 to use all available flood-bond funds:
“To fully fund all current and future needs for projects in Quartile One, according to the 2022 Prioritization Framework, and direct the Harris County Flood Control District to work with court officers and report to Commissioners Court a project schedule by September 18th, 2025, on all future projects with a recommendation.”
Impact of Cuts
Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey, the dissenting Republican, said, “It was like a bunker-busting bomb exploding yesterday. They blew up the 2018 bond program.” The decision will eliminate funding for 44 of the 48 bond projects that Ramsey had in his precinct.
“There’s no longer any money for them,” said Ramsey.
Ramsey will lose $424 million of flood-bond funding. He added, “Projects in the top quartile eat up every remaining available dollar in the bond. Every bit of it. There’s none left. Not a single dime.”
Only those marked with a #1 in the Quartile Column will be pursued at this point. The rest are effectively dead unless funding can be found elsewhere.
No Projects Left in Lake Houston Area
All HCFCD flood-bond projects in the Lake Houston Area fell below Ellis’ Equity Quartile #1 into the second, third, or fourth quartiles.
Following the Democratic plan will eliminate $20 million for Lake Houston Floodgates See Project G-103-Gates.
It will also eliminate any help for the Kingwood Diversion Ditch. The Kingwood Area Drainage Analysis called that the most important project in the area. And Kingwood experienced the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
Chart showing feet above flood stage of 33 gages of misc. bayous in Harris County during Harvey.Gage on far left is Kingwood.
This doesn’t mean those projects will automatically die. But it is a setback.
It means project leaders will have to seek funding elsewhere for money that HCFCD had already committed years ago and that voters approved.
In that regard, Houston City Council Member Fred Flickinger had this to say about the Commissioner Court’s decision.
“Obviously the County’s handling of the flood bonds has been a concern for several years. Commissioner Ramsey is continuing to fight for our area to complete the necessary flood mitigation projects.
“However, regardless of the outcome at the County level, I have full confidence that the schedule I laid out in last year’s town hall meeting will in fact be held with the support of Representative Cunningham, Senator Creighton and Mayor Whitmire.”
Commissioner Ramsey also described the Gate project as his “Rubicon,” a reference to a Roman battle that represents a point of no return, i.e., a battle that must be won at all costs.
Uncertainty Surrounds 95 Active Projects
Ninety-five projects that fall into quartiles 2, 3 and 4 are listed as “Active.” HCFCD says it will move forward with any projects already in progress. But it’s unclear whether future stages will be implemented, i.e., moving from engineering to construction. We may know more in September.
HCFCD says they are moving forward with all HUD projects.
But GLO stressed the tightness of a February 28, 2027 deadline for 11 CDBG-DR projects valued at roughly $320 million. With only 20 months remaining to complete the projects, County Commissioners voted yesterday to take another three months to schedule projects.
For that group of projects, deadlines may be a bigger threat than funding. Think 17 months is plenty of time? It’s taken Harris County four years to get to this point with these projects! More uncertainty won’t speed things up.
Before the meeting, GLO Commissioner Dawn Buckingham warned county leaders to use the HUD funds “as quickly as possible.”
How Meeting Unfolded
Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a master of political theater, packed the first two hours of Commissioners Court with surrogates during the public-comment portion of the meeting. The same people and groups that Ellis used to tarnish previous Harris County Flood Control District administrators showed up again. They even carried similar signs.
Over and over and over again, they complained about the lack of bond-program:
Equity
Results
Transparency
Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, then led off the discussion with a PowerPoint presentation that she had been working to compile since February. The last slide shows how her team explored five different scenarios for maximizing available funding. (See her entire detailed report here.)
That set the stage for Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ 20-minute boilerplate rant about historical discrimination against poor neighborhoods and how rich neighborhoods get all the money.
Disconnect between Ellis Rant and Reality
But there’s a basic disconnect between the rant and reality. Note that of all HCFCD spending since 2000, money has gone disproportionately to watersheds with a majority low-to-moderate-income (LMI) population. Between 2000 and 2022, 61% went to the one third of watersheds with an LMI-majority population. So, poor watersheds already receive the lion’s share of funding – almost twice as much as middle and upper income areas.
Busting the Myth: Between 2000 and 2022, in Harris county, poor, not rich neighborhoods have gotten the lion’s share of flood mitigation dollars since 2000.
Regardless, Ellis was on a roll. And by the time he was done, three of his Democratic colleagues (Hidalgo, Garcia and Briones) were demanding more equity.
They voted to ignore all five of the scenarios that Petersen spent months working on and focus only on projects that ranked high on Ellis’ equity scale.
When Ramsey pointed out that one of the poorest neighborhoods in Precinct 3, Barrett Station, was defunded, Ellis shot back that his equity formula was “agnostic” to politics. But the numbers tell a different story.
Expect frequent updates on this in coming months as the situation evolves.
To view video of the discussion, look for Item 2 here. Public appearances come before Item Two, and there are several breaks during the discussion.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/27/25 at 4PM
2859 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/20250627-Ellis-Item-2.jpg?fit=1100%2C616&ssl=16161100adminadmin2025-06-27 15:36:392025-06-27 23:43:12Remaining Flood-Bond Funds Going Only to Equity Projects
City Begins Clearing Blocked Ditch Under Kingwood Drive
6/30/25 – The City of Houston Public Works Department wasted no time in starting to clean out a blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive. Once they found it.
The ditch, which parallels Valley Manor Drive west of Kingwood High School, had been neglected for so long that crews had a hard time finding it.
Distraught residents were ready to call in Indiana Jones. But City Council Member Fred Flickinger arrived first.
Still contractors are in for what qualifies as an “archeological dig.” Who knows what they’ll find in there? Residents found a mummified car wreck nearby, completely encased by a jungle of vines.
Photos of Work Beginning
It’s far from done. But at least you can see what you’re up against. Contractors are reportedly trying to get clearance from the Kingwood Country Club to remove the downstream blockage, too.
All that silt reduces conveyance and backs water up in heavy rains. 110 homes upstream from this blocked ditch under Kingwood Drive flooded during Harvey.
Scope of Work
According to Council Member Flickinger’s newsletter, the scope of work includes clearing and grubbing approximately six acres of land, removing and disposing of debris, trash, and tires at a landfill, as well as the removal of trees.
Any trees removed for the purpose of accessing the ditch will be replanted at a later date by Council Member Flickinger’s office with the help of Trees for Kingwood.
The project is entirely on Bear Branch Trail Association BBTA property and is being closely watched by BBTA and neighbors.
The project cost is $350,568.00 and is funded through the Houston Public Works Dedicated Drainage & Street Renewal Fund (DDSRF).
The City is preserving native trees wherever possible and trying only to remove invasive species. However, some trees may need to go to allow heavy equipment room to maneuver.
Project Completion, Work Hours, Impacts
Crews are already hard at work. And the project should end by Friday, August 29, 2025, weather permitting.
Construction activities will take place Monday through Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Sundays upon approval from the project manager.
The City expects no impacts to the sanitary sewer system. During the course of the work, some minor water line adjustments will be necessary. Citizens will be notified 72 hours in advance of any water outages.
Safety Caution
Please be aware of flagmen and orange traffic cones that may be present on-site to guide traffic as needed. However, this project is not expected to cause any traffic or mobility issues, such as lane closures or a significant increase in truck traffic.
Also note: there may be elevated noise levels at times due to the use of construction equipment and vehicles in the area.
For more information, please contact the District E office at (832) 393-3008 or via email at districte@houstontx.gov.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/30/2025
2862 Days since Hurricane Harvey
With 25% Funding Shortfall, 80% of Flood-Bond Projects Cut
6/30/25 and 7/3/25 – Updated to clarify a distinction between Bond Projects and Bond IDs, and also correct several entries in tables.
6/29/25 – Analysis of documents released after the Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting on 6/26/25, shows that because of a claimed 25% flood-bond funding shortfall, the county will stop funding 80% of Bond IDs and 75% of Bond projects. Precinct 3 will bear the most cuts.
Usually, precincts share equally, but in this case, Precinct 3, the lone Republican-led district will retain only 14% of active projects.
Before the meeting, the county had released only one blank page about what turned out to be the disappearance of more than a billion dollars.
Even worse, to make up for the claimed shortfall, Democratic Commissioners voted 4:1 along party lines to defund most of the remaining projects voters approved in the 2018 Flood Bond.
Something’s not adding up that demands an explanation.
Huh? 80% of Projects Cut after Losing 25% of Funding?
The $2.5 billion Bond was sold with a project list that totaled roughly $5.1 billion. However, partner funding more than made up the difference. Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has commitments for another $2.7 billion – bringing the total available to $5.2 billion. A $1.3 billion shortfall is 25% of that total.
Questions:
Reasons Proposed for Shortfall
In her presentation Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, attempted to explain the shortfall by alluding to:
Others have alluded to:
Why Such Draconian Cuts?
Why are the cuts so disproportionate to the shortfall?
High on the list of possible explanations would be the motion that Democratic members of Commissioners Court approved.
It called to focus only on projects in the top quartile of Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index.
But it also called to fully fund future costs associated with those projects. That builds scope creep into the bond.
If, for instance, the Flood Bond only included a preliminary engineering review for a project, it will now include full engineering, design, right-of-way acquisition, construction, landscaping, turnover costs and bagels.
In other words…
It’s a fundamental breach of public trust.
Why Are We Only Learning Now?
Since Harris County Democratic Commissioners brought in new management, HCFCD has largely gone dark. For example:
The lack of information masks serious issues that have built for years concerning the efficiency and transparency of Flood Control.
In last week’s discussion, Judge Lina Hidalgo complained repeatedly and bitterly about her lack of understanding, a lack of transparency and her inability to get simple, straight answers.
But hey, what kind of manager puts up with that? For seven years!
Are Cuts Fair?
The County uses Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index to rank flood-mitigation Bond IDs from 0 to 10 using a multi-factor index. Some Bond IDs contain multiple projects. But whether you assess the cuts by Bond ID or Projects, P3 still suffers the most.
After a marathon 5-hour discussion, Commissioners voted to continue funding only projects scoring above 7.5. The rest will die.
Ellis’ scoring matrix gives 65% weight to factors such as race, household income, social vulnerability, population density, and housing density.
It gives no weight to flood damage, severity of flooding, flood frequency, or flood risk.
Ellis cherry-picked statistics to gerrymander flood-control dollars, not reduce damage.
Many of the remaining dollars in the bond will go to watersheds that have already received hundreds of millions of dollars in mitigation funds. Meanwhile…
Precinct 3 had the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
Yet Precinct 3, the lone, Republican-led precinct, bore the brunt of the funding cuts wide margins.
Here’s a breakdown of the totals by quintile and precinct. Because projects sometimes cross precinct boundaries, when a project did so, I counted it once for each precinct it benefitted.
Next, look at Bond IDs. A bond ID may contain multiple projects. And again, when a Bond ID benefited two precincts, I counted it twice. Percentages change slightly. But the same basic picture emerges…only more so:
Barrett Station is in Precinct 3. It’s one of the poorest areas in the county. And it had its funding cut. That shows this is more about politics than concern for the poor.
To compile these tables and the pie chart above, I counted Bond IDs and Projects in each quartile in this spreadsheet,
The funding cuts likely won’t affect a subset of 29 projects funded by HUD because those are 100% federally funded. Regardless…
Stunned citizens are struggling to comprehend the scope of the cuts, which will negatively impact roughly 80% of the county.
No wonder the county kept a tight lid on its analysis and didn’t post anything for the public to review before the meeting. Protesters might have showed up to counter two hours of testimony by Ellis’ surrogates last Thursday.
We Need to Demand…
And we need them fast. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has filed a lawsuit yet. This feels like slow-motion voter fraud.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/29/25 and updated on 6/30/25
2861 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
Remaining Flood-Bond Funds Going Only to Equity Projects
6/27/25 4PM – In a marathon discussion yesterday that stretched for hours, Harris County Commissioners Court struggled with how to plug a $1.3 billion shortfall in 2018 Flood-Bond funding. In the end, they voted 4-1 along party lines to apply all remaining flood-bond money exclusively to projects that ranked in the top quartile on Rodney Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Index.
This will effectively defund all projects that fall into the second, third and fourth quartiles on Ellis’ Equity Prioritization Framework.
The Motion
Commissioners voted 4:1 to use all available flood-bond funds:
Impact of Cuts
Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey, the dissenting Republican, said, “It was like a bunker-busting bomb exploding yesterday. They blew up the 2018 bond program.” The decision will eliminate funding for 44 of the 48 bond projects that Ramsey had in his precinct.
“There’s no longer any money for them,” said Ramsey.
Ramsey will lose $424 million of flood-bond funding. He added, “Projects in the top quartile eat up every remaining available dollar in the bond. Every bit of it. There’s none left. Not a single dime.”
Want to see whether a project near you was killed? Here is a list of Flood-Bond Projects divided into Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ Equity Quartiles.
Only those marked with a #1 in the Quartile Column will be pursued at this point. The rest are effectively dead unless funding can be found elsewhere.
No Projects Left in Lake Houston Area
All HCFCD flood-bond projects in the Lake Houston Area fell below Ellis’ Equity Quartile #1 into the second, third, or fourth quartiles.
Following the Democratic plan will eliminate $20 million for Lake Houston Floodgates See Project G-103-Gates.
It will also eliminate any help for the Kingwood Diversion Ditch. The Kingwood Area Drainage Analysis called that the most important project in the area. And Kingwood experienced the highest flooding in the county during Harvey.
This doesn’t mean those projects will automatically die. But it is a setback.
It means project leaders will have to seek funding elsewhere for money that HCFCD had already committed years ago and that voters approved.
In that regard, Houston City Council Member Fred Flickinger had this to say about the Commissioner Court’s decision.
“Obviously the County’s handling of the flood bonds has been a concern for several years. Commissioner Ramsey is continuing to fight for our area to complete the necessary flood mitigation projects.
“However, regardless of the outcome at the County level, I have full confidence that the schedule I laid out in last year’s town hall meeting will in fact be held with the support of Representative Cunningham, Senator Creighton and Mayor Whitmire.”
Commissioner Ramsey also described the Gate project as his “Rubicon,” a reference to a Roman battle that represents a point of no return, i.e., a battle that must be won at all costs.
Uncertainty Surrounds 95 Active Projects
Ninety-five projects that fall into quartiles 2, 3 and 4 are listed as “Active.” HCFCD says it will move forward with any projects already in progress. But it’s unclear whether future stages will be implemented, i.e., moving from engineering to construction. We may know more in September.
HUD Project Deadlines Tightened Even More
Yesterday’s decision could affect U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) CDBG-MIT and CDBG-DR grants under review by the Texas General Land Office (GLO). Harris County Flood Control applied for 29 such grants.
HCFCD says they are moving forward with all HUD projects.
But GLO stressed the tightness of a February 28, 2027 deadline for 11 CDBG-DR projects valued at roughly $320 million. With only 20 months remaining to complete the projects, County Commissioners voted yesterday to take another three months to schedule projects.
For that group of projects, deadlines may be a bigger threat than funding. Think 17 months is plenty of time? It’s taken Harris County four years to get to this point with these projects! More uncertainty won’t speed things up.
Before the meeting, GLO Commissioner Dawn Buckingham warned county leaders to use the HUD funds “as quickly as possible.”
How Meeting Unfolded
Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a master of political theater, packed the first two hours of Commissioners Court with surrogates during the public-comment portion of the meeting. The same people and groups that Ellis used to tarnish previous Harris County Flood Control District administrators showed up again. They even carried similar signs.
Over and over and over again, they complained about the lack of bond-program:
Dr. Tina Petersen, executive director of HCFCD, then led off the discussion with a PowerPoint presentation that she had been working to compile since February. The last slide shows how her team explored five different scenarios for maximizing available funding. (See her entire detailed report here.)
That set the stage for Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis’ 20-minute boilerplate rant about historical discrimination against poor neighborhoods and how rich neighborhoods get all the money.
Disconnect between Ellis Rant and Reality
But there’s a basic disconnect between the rant and reality. Note that of all HCFCD spending since 2000, money has gone disproportionately to watersheds with a majority low-to-moderate-income (LMI) population. Between 2000 and 2022, 61% went to the one third of watersheds with an LMI-majority population. So, poor watersheds already receive the lion’s share of funding – almost twice as much as middle and upper income areas.
Regardless, Ellis was on a roll. And by the time he was done, three of his Democratic colleagues (Hidalgo, Garcia and Briones) were demanding more equity.
They voted to ignore all five of the scenarios that Petersen spent months working on and focus only on projects that ranked high on Ellis’ equity scale.
When Ramsey pointed out that one of the poorest neighborhoods in Precinct 3, Barrett Station, was defunded, Ellis shot back that his equity formula was “agnostic” to politics. But the numbers tell a different story.
Little wonder that the county released no information on this issue before the vote yesterday. Opposition to Ellis’ ringers might have had time to organize.
Expect frequent updates on this in coming months as the situation evolves.
To view video of the discussion, look for Item 2 here. Public appearances come before Item Two, and there are several breaks during the discussion.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/27/25 at 4PM
2859 Days since Hurricane Harvey